"Go from my sight!" said Miser Farebrother. "And bear this in mind: my word is law. You will marry the gentleman I have chosen for you, or my curse shall rest upon you till your dying day! My death alone shall accomplish your guilty desire."
Thereafter there was no peace for her. There was something devilish in the ingenuity displayed by her enemies to torture her soul. There are women, strong women, whom it would have driven to madness; but from this despair Phœbe was mercifully saved. "I will bear it; I will bear it," she murmured, "till the end comes. I must preserve my reason. When I am dead, Aunt Leth will drop a flower on my grave. And Mr. Cornwall, perhaps, will think with sorrow of the poor girl whose heart is his for ever and ever!" She never thought of him now as "Fred;" he was too far removed from her; all was over between them, but she would be faithful to him to the last. She intrenched herself in silence, never opening her lips to Mrs. Pamflett and Jeremiah, and never to her father unless he addressed her and compelled her to reply. From the day he struck her she did not call him "father." She did not regard him as such; her heart was a heart of tenderness, but his merciless conduct had deadened it to him. She thought frequently of her mother, and prayed aloud to that pure spirit. "Take me, mother," she cried, "take your unhappy child from this hard world!" So months passed, her cross becoming harder to bear with every rising sun. Then it was that Phœbe began to fear that in the cruel, unequal fight her reason might be wrecked. At length a crisis came.
During the day her father had been more than usually savage toward her. In the evening he ordered her to her room. She went willingly, and undressing, retired to bed.
She did not know what time of the night it was when she heard her father's voice outside her door. He had tried the handle, but Phœbe never went to bed now without turning the key in the lock.
"Answer me! answer me!" cried her father.
"What do you want?" she asked, sitting up in bed.
"You! Dress this instant, and come out!"
She rose from her bed, and dressed hurriedly, without lighting a candle. Then she went to the door and opened it.
"Assist me to my room," he said, in his cold, cruel voice.
He leant upon her with such force that he almost bore her down. They reached his room.